Larimer County eyes $100M cost to fix flood-ravaged roads

Even as state and county roads are repaired, flood victims face their own battles to fix washed-out driveways and private roads.

Oct. 10, 2013

Ian Siemplenski stands in front of the foundation of his home Wednesday in the Whale Rock area west of Fort Collins. He lost his home during the High Park Fire and is rebuilding but can't get a cement truck up to the site due to road damage caused by the September flooding. / V. Richard Haro/The Coloradoan

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Rocks are used to shore up a stretch of Stove Prairie Road west of Fort Collins that was damaged by September flooding, as seen during an aerial tour of High Park Fire burn area mitigation efforts on Wednesday. / V. Richard Haro/The Coloradoan

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• To keep track of the latest information on Larimer County’s response to flooding, including the status of roads and bridges, visit www.larimer.org/flooding2013.

Repairing Larimer County’s flood-damaged roads is going to be a long, expensive and painful haul.

While much of the cost to rebuild roads maintained by Larimer County or the state of Colorado is expected to be reimbursed through federal disaster relief funds, private roads serving mountain areas hit hard by flooding is a different story.

“I don’t know if we are going to get any help at all,” said Ian Siemplenski, who lives south of Rist Canyon in an area served by Whale Rock Road. “Our road association is pretty much broke because of the High Park Fire.

“Repairing what the flood did would put us in the red and way in the hole.”

Siemplenski, who is rebuilding the home he lost to the 2012 High Park Fire, said the road to his place washed out in three places during last month’s flooding. Makeshift repairs were put in to make it passable.

A four-wheel-drive vehicle can make it up the steep, rocky road, but a cement truck that would bring in material to finish the foundation on his house could not make the trip.

“I don’t know what we are going to do,” he said.

Similar issues are faced by the road associations and public improvement districts that maintain roads across the county, including in heavily damaged areas around Estes Park, Glen Haven and Drake, Larimer County officials say.

What, if any, role the county might play to assist with repairs is not clear. County staff are awaiting direction from commissioners as to whether crews working on county-maintained road should get involved in improving the connections of private roads to county roads.

Commissioner Steve Johnson said county engineers estimated after the fire that the cost to repair private roads in the Whale Rock area could reach into hundred of thousand of dollars.

As much as the county would like to help, it may not have the resources to do so, he said.

“I think the county is going to be very strapped just to do the public roads we’re responsible for,” he said. “I don’t see us having a lot of money left over to spend on private roads.”

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Assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, might be available for homeowners who lost driveways or road access from the flooding, said William C. Lindsey, a FEMA public information officer.

Anyone who suffered a loss should register with the agency to get connected with resources and organizations that may be available depending on their circumstances, he said.

“We don’t put an umbrella over a disaster,” Lindsey said. “We work with individuals on a case-by-case basis.”

Siemplenski said he has been denied FEMA aid because he stays four days a week on the property rather then seven while the house is being rebuilt, so it is not considered a primary residence.

Moving forward

Progress is being made in repairing county roads that were torn apart by the unprecedented flooding, Larimer County officials told commissioners on Thursday. Much work remains to be done, especially with winter fast approaching.

Permanent repairs to county roads and bridges are expected to cost about $90 million, said Marc Engemoen, the county’s director of public works.

That’s four to five times to annual budget of the county’s road and bridge department, he said. Temporary fixes are expected to cost another $12 million.

In some areas, fixes such as roughing in a temporary road where County Road 44H, or the upper Buckhorn Road, was scoured away the work is progressing faster than expected, Engemoen said.

Contractors working on the road expect to have emergency repairs to the 8-mile segment complete by early next week, opening access to residents on Crystal Mountain and points farther west.

The lower Buckhorn Road, which is County Road 27, has been patched enough to provide access to local residents. But work on the road through its “narrows” section — where it was cut in six places — north of Masonville has been stopped as crews move to areas of higher priority.

Work to rough in a road to the Glen Haven area along the remnants of County Road 43 is underway but moving slowly, Engemoen said. Crews established a foothold in Drake and are working their way up to Glen Haven.

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Pieces of the road are still intact, but in other areas it is washed out to bedrock, leaving behind trenches 6 to 8 feet deep, he said.

“You can’t even tell if there was a road there,” Engemoen said. “It’s terrific, terrific damage … extremely severe. It’s certainly the worst damage I have ever seen in my career.”

A serious problem along the road between Estes Park and Glen Haven is the threat of landslides from steep, unstable hills, he said. An expert from Arizona is being brought in to advise state and county officials on how to handle the hazardous conditions.

Engemoen said he had no estimate on when a temporary road will reach Glen Haven or the Big Elk Meadows area near U.S. Highway 36.

Even with county, state and federal agencies and contractors working on repairing the roads around Glen Haven, the area is not likely to return to “normal” until 2015.

Getting by

County officials have to be careful to “dot every i and cross every t” during the process of making temporary and permanent repairs in order to receive cost reimbursement and manage cash flow, Engemoen said.

That means the recovery process is going to slow down after a time, and possibly add to residents’ frustration over expectations about the pace of progress. Emotions may run high.

The flood has been similar to a death in a family, he said. Residents are experiencing the stages of grief — including denial, anger, bargaining and acceptance — at different times.

“It’s going to be a slow and at times painful process” for residents and the county organization, Engemoen said.

With County Road 27 washed out near Poudre Canyon and to the south along Buckhorn Creek, residents of the Stove Prairie area have been left with Rist Canyon Road as their only access route.

The closure has added at least an hour to any trip to Denver because of the circuitous route, said Mark Benjamin, whose house is near the southern wash-out area.

“This whole driving Rist Canyon thing is killing me,” he said.

It’s a reality residents are going to have to live with for a long time, Benjamin said.

Deanna Skelton, who has lived along Stove Prairie Road for 22 years, said work done by the county in Rist Canyon after the High Park Fire kept the flooding from being even worse.

The county placed a series of enlarged culverts along the road in anticipation of significantly increased runoff from severely burned areas. The culverts survived flash flooding from summer thunderstorms and held up during the September deluge.

Driving Rist Canyon for every trip to Fort Collins is inconvenient but “not terrible,” she said.

“It’s no big deal compared to what other people have to deal with,” Skelton said.